Safe Streets Park Heights Marks 387 Days Without Homicide

The Park Heights Safe Streets site has gone 387 days and counting without a homicide, city officials announced following the last fatality in the site’s boundaries on January 12, 2025 in the 4400 block of Reisterstown Road. The streak highlights a focused, street-level violence-interruption effort that city leaders say is central to neighborhood safety and broader declines in Baltimore violence metrics.

Mayor Brandon M. Scott, the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement and LifeBridge Health’s Center for Hope credited Safe Streets staff and frontline interrupters for the milestone. “When I was growing up in Park Heights, it was unimaginable that this area could go more than a year without a homicide,” Mayor Scott said. He added that the achievement is not random: “Now the site has gone over 365 days without a homicide twice since I took office. This is not a coincidence, and neither are the historic reductions in shootings and homicides we are seeing across Baltimore. They are a testament to what is possible when we invest in community members, partners, and frontline violence interrupters all working together to prevent violence in their own communities.”

Safe Streets Baltimore operates ten sites across the city in neighborhoods identified as hot spots for gun violence. The program’s daily work centers on in-person mediation and crisis intervention aimed at preventing conflicts from escalating into shootings or homicides. Staff mediated 1,752 potentially violent conflicts across all ten sites in 2025, and program materials report over 230 mediations in the last year plus that prevented potentially violent confrontations from escalating. As of February 3, 2026 Safe Streets staff had conducted over 123 successful mediations so far in the calendar year.

External evaluation reinforces the program’s measured impact. A Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health report cited by city partners found Safe Streets reduced homicides and nonfatal shootings in hot-spot neighborhoods, and estimated an economic return of roughly $7.20 to $19.20 for every $1 invested, depending on the costing method used. That return frames the milestone as both a public-safety and public-investment result: reducing lethal violence lowers immediate human and health costs and, over time, can improve economic prospects for neighborhoods.

The Park Heights streak follows an earlier no-homicide run that reached more than a year in 2024. That prior streak ended when a homicide occurred inside the site boundaries in January 2025; the current count of 387 days restarts from that January 12 incident. Other Safe Streets sites have posted extended homicide-free periods as well, and citywide figures cited by officials show large declines in 2024 versus 2023 in homicides and nonfatal shootings.

Local celebrations and community outreach have accompanied milestones in recent months, including planned events at 3929 Park Heights Ave and previous gatherings near 5320 Park Heights Ave. City press inquiries can be directed to press@baltimorecity.gov.

For Park Heights residents and local businesses, the streak is tangible evidence that sustained violence-prevention work can change street-level outcomes. Officials say the work will continue with mediations, community engagement and partnerships aimed at keeping those gains intact while broadening economic and health opportunities across the neighborhood.